Couture appeared on local Las Vegas radio recently – no family commitments to keep him occupied during the holidays, you understand – to reveal he’s landed a role alongside fellow baldster Bruce Willis in a movie that will film in early December and that he hopes everybody else can clear their calendars in time to crap out an “Expendables” sequel in March. With all that going on, Couture will have a very limited window in which to squeeze in any actual MMA before he turns 48 next June. Still, he maintains that if the UFC brings him something juicy, he’ll give it a sniff.

Every year, a handful of MMA fighters ascend from obscurity to contendership, from prospect status to championship gold — from nothing to something. In honor of The Warrior’s Way, which hits theaters next Friday, we’d like to salute MMA’s breakout class of 2010, whose careers exploded this year, and who are all poised for even larger accomplishments in 2011.

PHIL DAVIS Notable 2010 victories: Brian Stann (unanimous decision, UFC 109), Alexander Gustafsson (submission R1, UFC 112), Tim Boetsch (submission R2, UFC 123) Between his pink shorts, action-figure physique, and aggressive grappling, Mr. Wonderful has become an unmistakable figure in the UFC’s light-heavyweight division. A year ago, he was a relatively unknown 4-0 prospect trying to re-invent himself as a cage-fighter after a brilliant collegiate wrestling career at Penn State, which culminated in a 2008 NCAA title. Davis made his Octagon debut this February, and has since sent four straight opponents back to the drawing board, beginning with former WEC champ Brian Stann, and ending with a Submission of the Night performance against Tim Boetsch. Having proven himself against gritty veterans and promising rookies, we’re about to find out if Davis can keep his dominant run going against the next level of UFC contenders.

COURT McGEE Notable 2010 victories: Kris McCray (submission R2, TUF 11 Finale), Ryan Jensen (submission R3, UFC 121) Court McGee’s life is an object lesson in never, ever giving up, no matter how dire the circumstances. A former drug-addict who was declared clinically dead after an overdose in 2005, McGee got clean and devoted his life to MMA. His stint on The Ultimate Fighter 11 this year was almost cut short after he lost a bum decision to Nick Ring, but McGee re-entered the competition as an injury replacement, and went on to choke out James Hammortree, Brad Tavares, and Kris McCray to earn the season’s middleweight trophy. In his first post-TUF test at UFC 121, he survived getting bombed out on by Ryan Jensen in the first round, and turned the momentum around when Jensen began to fade in round two. In the end, Jensen was tapping like the rest of them, and Court McGee had secured his reputation as one of toughest (and most likable) bastards TUF has ever produced.

With heavyweight Herschel Walker forced out of his planned December 4 Strikeforce bout with WEC veteran Scott Carson due to a deep cut he sustained training with Daniel Cormier on Friday, a light heavyweight scrap between usual middleweights Lucas Lopes and Benji Radach has been put together at the last minute to help fill in the dwindling Henderson vs. Babalu fight card.

Earlier in the week yet-to-be matched up Jesse Finney, who was originally slated to face Scott Smith before "Hands of Steel" was instead matched up with Strikeforce newcomer Paul Daley, was forced to bow out of the event due to an eye injury.

Sources close to the situation told CagePotato.com Thursday that Lopes (19-10), who is one of Finney’s training partners and holds a win over UFC standout Thiago Alves, has agreed to face Radach on the card. Radach (20-5), whose record includes wins over Murilo Rua and Gerald Harris, hasn’t fought since being knocked out by Smith last year, but he is a crafty veteran Lopes would regret taking lightly.

Another source we spoke to informed us that Strikeforce was unable to find a suitable opponent in time for Carson, so the 4-1 veteran whose return to MMA after a nine-year absence in June was spoiled by a first round knock out by Lorenz Larkin.

Happy Thanksgiving, Potato Nation! If you’re reading this right now, you should probably consider disconnecting from the Internet and spending time with your family. If you came here to escape those horrible people, brother we can relate. (*Pours another glass of scotch*) Let us know what you’re thankful for in the comments section, and keep up-to-date with this grab-bag of UFC headlines…

– Replacing the unfortunately injured Jose Aldo at UFC 125 against Josh Grispi will be Dustin Poirier, an 8-1 featherweight prospect who just knocked out Zach Micklewright in 53 seconds earlier this month at WEC 52: Faber vs. Mizugaki. Chris Leben vs. Brian Stann will now be the event’s co-headliner, in support of the Frankie Edgar vs. Gray Maynard lightweight title fight.

– Coming off an ugly knockout loss against George Roop at WEC 51, "The Korean Zombie" Chan Sung Jung has his win-or-go-home fight booked, as he’ll be taking on Rani Yahya at Fight for the Troops 2 on January 22nd. It’ll be the only fight on the card where you won’t be able to chant "U!S!A!" in support of at least one of the fighters. Expect a lot of fans in the arena to make trips to the bathroom.

Ken Pavia is a firm believer of the old adage, “Everything happens for a reason.”

When he inadvertently became an MMA agent six years ago, it was a result of the sport finding him and not the other way around, but looking back he says he’s thankful that it did.

Working as a traditional sports agent since graduating from the University of Miami School of Law and opening his first agency, Pavia says that he always had an eye for talent and would often put his skill to use outside of his practice, which caught the attention of an early MMA media pioneer.

“I had a men’s league softball team in Huntington Beach. I was acting as a pseudo-General Manager for the team and I had pretty much the best players from every team who competed on our team. There were probably 500 teams in the leagues and our team always made it to the ‘A’ league championships every year. The umpire for the league came to me and asked me how it was that I came to have all of the best players from all of the teams on my team and I told him I was a mainstream sports agent,” Pavia recalls. “He was told me, ‘I have a website that covers MMA.’ By coincidence, I was a fan and I bought UFC 1 and we chatted a bit about the sport and he told me to check out his website. That was [Sherdog.com founder] Jeff Sherwood. We struck up a friendship and have been great friends ever since. That was probably 10 years ago.”

The man who admitted to being former UFC fighter Lee Murray’s right-hand man in the Securitas depot robbery four years ago that netted "Lightning" and his team the equivalent of $85 million USD, was sentenced on Monday to 18 years behind bars for his part in the mega heist.

0-0-1 former MMA fighter Paul "The Enforcer" Allen, who was handed over to British authorities in 2008 after being arrested in Morocco with Murray in 2006 pled guilty to charges of conspiracy to kidnap, conspiracy to commit robbery and conspiracy to possess a firearm and was sentenced to nearly double the years in jail as Lee, who was identified as the mastermind behind the spectacular robbery.

The well-planned out heist that saw Murray, disguised with a prosthetic nose and chin and dressed as a police officer kidnap the security depot’s manager and his family at gunpoint before cleaning out a number of vaults from the previously thought to be uncompromisable money storage depot.

Apologies to those of you who patiently waited all day yesterday for our weekly rumor feature, which has been making us tons of new friends in the industry, believe me. After the jump, you’ll find five juicy items, mostly pertaining to guys getting screwed out of money. As usual, four are complete fabrications, and one is 100% on the level. Can you solve the mystery? Can we avoid getting sued for one more week? Time will tell!

The Dutch newspaper, de Telegraph is reporting that badboy K-1 standout Badr Hari was released from prison in Amsterdam yesterday after serving less than a month behind bars for an alleged assault on a bouncer earlier this year.

According to police, in February Hari and a group of friends were refused entry to a club because their attire did not conform to the dress code set by the bar. An argument escalated to a physical altercation that allegedly saw Hari break the doorman’s nose and eye socket.

(For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation will do. PicProps: CombatLifestyle)

As it stands, the Potato has what you might call in the parlance of the fight game a “verbal agreement” in place to have Shonie Carter on an upcoming episode of The Bum Rush. So far it’s just been a matter of getting our schedules to mesh. When it happens and we get Mr. International live on the air you can damn sure bet we’re going to get to the bottom of this little tidbit: Recently retired, it now appears that Carter wants to take his singular talents to the world of professional wrestling. At least that’s what he told Old Dad on Wednesday in an interview over on MMA Fighting.

"I want to go to the WWE … ," Carter says. "I’m coming to acknowledge the midlife crisis that a lot of guys go through where they get a Corvette and a hot blonde girlfriend with big boobs. I’ve just decided to do the WWE. Overtime, that will be my name. Overtime, because I work hard. I put that hard hat on, I bring a lunchbox, and I punch in. If you get in that ring with me, you better punch in too, because you’re going to be working overtime."

Strikeforce held a media conference call on Tuesday ahead of its December 4 Henderson vs. Babalu show in St. Louis, MO. Taking part in the call were the promotion’s CEO Scott Coker, former Olympian Matt Lindland, Octagon refugee Paul Daley, and Strikeforce sluggers Scott Smith and Robbie Lawler.

Though there weren’t any shocking revelations that came out of the call, one thing that stood out was how terrible and predictable the questions were.

I guess most of these MMA "journalists" as we’re so often referred to as being, didn’t bother to read Ben’s list of questions you shouldn’t ask when interviewing an MMA fighter: